Blog/2025-03-12/Fatherhood
There's phases to life. When it's time to move on to the next thing, it's time to move on. Holding on to the life you have is pointless.
One thing I think I'm particularly good at is taking the advice of my friends. This is fortunate because one thing I'm bad at is realizing when it's time for that change in phases. I went home after that trip, told Julie - who I'd known for over a decade and lived with for a few years already - that she had to be my girlfriend[3] because that's what I'd told the guys[4]. 8 months later we were married. And a year and a half later we have a daughter together.
One thing that's stayed constant through my life is that I've experienced many events differently from how other people who have gone through similar events do, based on their descriptions. So I assumed having a child would be the same. Of course, I love her as any parent does. But what I wasn't prepared for was the overwhelming degree to which I feel the need to orient my life around her happiness. The sensation I've seen in other parents of wild pride at the smallest of their children's achievements is mine as well. I feel joy at seeing her stretch her legs, or yawn, or grab my finger.
I have never felt unloved by my parents, but I did not know the degree of it. And now I have some small measure. I feel changed by the experience[5]. I drive in Subaru's I-mode rather than S-mode and stay in the more right-hand lanes of the freeway. I am more careful crossing streets and less polarized by sports[6].
Every older person told me to enjoy my childhood when I was little and I nodded my head and went out to play every time not recognizing the time that would be the last time I would play like that. Enjoying childhood is something you do in itself, not in relation to adulthood which you haven't even seen yet. It is like that with parenthood: you experience it from parents, but in an abstracted way. Their emotions do not transfer themselves to you in their full sensation.
It isn't just emotion. All things perhaps are hard to communicate like this. Famously, You Can't Tell People Anything. So out there are all these things that you just have to do to know. You can't know whether you'll like it till you do it. And doing it is a big leap that isn't really reversible.
For the most part, I am not upset that it is at this stage in my life that I am a parent. Julie and I are fairly well-established in our careers and comfortably off. Our age and time together has made us mellow and communicative in our interactions with each other. All these things will hopefully last, and lead to a pleasant childhood for our daughter.
But having now held this little girl in my lap, I cannot imagine that I would delay this any amount of time. And given that I would not delay it, I cannot imagine not doing it sooner. There is a thing about these strong emotions that is hard to communicate. Grief at the loss of a family member, joy at the birth of another. But also there is just an aspect of the unknown that is not communicable. You have to discover it in the doing.
Fortunately, I'm pretty good at taking the advice of my friends.
Notes
- ↑ Who would end up being the officiant at our wedding
- ↑ We asked him if he and his wife were expecting, and then he told us how they decided it was time.
- ↑ Shortly after Charles said what I've quoted, he asked me if Julie and I were dating. Put on the spot, I said we were and had been since January. This was the last in a long line of similar questions from our friends, starting months earlier with Shreyas.
- ↑ The majority of them have known her for longer than they've known me because we all met at LiveRamp where we worked for many years.
- ↑ A thing I've always wondered about is what the influence of parenthood is on society. Parents are naturally more risk-averse than single people, particularly single men. So a society of mostly parents should be safer, ceteris paribus. Japan is much safer than the US, and has a much higher childlessness rate, however, so that puts paid to that theory according to Society at a Glance 2024 (PDF) (Report). OECD Publishing. 2024. p. 11.
- ↑ I'm an Arsenal fan (a gooner, a name otherwise appropriated these days) and Julie will tell you that on a match-day, my mood can fluctuate based on how we do. Arteta's hand at the reins has been good.
